The Crazies

A serial killer has been on trial in Philadelphia for several weeks and yet the TV networks that love to devote every waking hour to covering a murder trial if it involves the likes of Casey Anthony or Jodi Arias, have totally ignored it. I’m referring to the trial of a ghoul named Kermit Gosnell, who made a practice of murdering babies born alive after he botched late-term abortions.

Obviously, the reason that all the TV networks other than Fox have gone out of their way to bury this story is because anything that varies from the left-wing narrative that there’s no difference between a woman having an abortion and having a mole removed is seen as providing Pro-Lifers with ammunition.

Several of Gosnell’s unlicensed assistants have testified that they’ve seen these babies breathing and have heard Gosnell, who would have been right at home performing experiments for the Nazis, joke that some of them were big enough to walk to the bus stop. He would deliver the coup de grace by cutting their tiny spines.

The problem is that even if he’s found guilty and sentenced to death, he will live another few decades while his lawyers appeal his conviction. And even after the appeals run out, the state will make every effort to ensure that his execution is pain-free. The truth is justice would only be served if a day after he’s found guilty he would be done away with by having his own spine severed.

It’s worth mentioning that Obama, when he served in the Illinois legislature, voted against making it a crime to kill babies who survived abortions. Not to be outdone, California’s own loony senator, Barbara Boxer, once insisted that “A baby’s life doesn’t begin until it’s brought home from the hospital.” I haven’t yet found a theological basis for that, but it does remind me of the Jewish joke — and, no, I’m not referring to Mrs. Boxer — that a Jewish boy is still a baby until he graduates from medical school.

If you spend any time at all studying American liberals, you will be convinced that “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” with its spooky pod people from outer space, is a documentary.

In all the skirmishing over weapons, the one conclusion I have come to is that if this administration were really serious about doing something to decrease violence in America, they would forget about trying to shoot holes in the Second Amendment. Instead, they would make it easier for states to institutionalize psychotics. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I don’t think you would have needed to have a Ph.D to recognize that the guys who committed mass murder in Tucson, Aurora, Fort Hood and Newtown, weren’t playing with a full deck.

I mean, have you looked at their photos? They might as well have been walking around with a sign around their necks that read: “I am certifiably insane, and if you don’t get me into a padded cell immediately, you will live to regret it.”

The other thing a nation that was actually serious about gun violence would do is send the National Guard into every major urban area and clear out the gangbangers. Anyone who thinks that Kabul, Kunduz and Kandahar, present a greater danger to Americans than Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit, has simply not been paying attention.

In much the same way, our nation twiddles its thumbs while nutballs in Iran and North Korea threaten to nuke us and our allies. In the meantime, while our enemies gear up, we’re stuck with a president who likes to hear his own voice almost as much as Kim Jung Un. Obama speaks loudly and carries a very small stick.

Our foreign policy mirrors the way we deal with violent lunatics domestically. Just as we waited until Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Nidal Hasan and Adam Lanza, went off on their killing sprees, leaving 58 dead people in their wake because we lacked the spine to be proactive, we dawdle while the loons in Tehran and Pyongyang promise to destroy us. Some folks don’t think they’re capable of carrying out their threats. Maybe they are and maybe they’re not. But why take chances?

It seems to me that the sensible thing to do if a nation vows to nuke America is to do unto them before they do unto us. Otherwise, what’s the point of having all those very expensive bombs at our disposal? Where is it written that the bad guys get to hit us first? I know that the same louts who wanted us to disarm unilaterally during the Cold War want us to convert our nuclear arsenal into plowshares, but we used similar bombs 68 years ago and it worked like a charm.

I hate to sound like a worrywart, but it seems to me that time is of the essence. I’m concerned that if we wait too long, Obama will simply be snookered into making one more disarmament treaty with Vladimir Putin, and we’ll wind up at the mercy of the Canadians.

Author Bio:

Burt Prelutsky, a very nice person once you get to know him, has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. As a freelancer, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Emmy, Holiday, American Film, and Sports Illustrated.
For television, he has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. In addition, he has written a batch of terrific TV movies. View Burt’s IMDB profile.
Talk about being well-rounded, he plays tennis and poker... and rarely cheats at either.
He lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he takes his marching orders from a wife named Yvonne and a dog named Angel.Author website: http://www.burtprelutsky.com/

Wheels –
I suggest you do a bit more reading up on Kevorkian, MD.
The man tortured nobody.
The man treated each person he dealt with with compassion.
The man sat and cried with his patients.
The man did not live in a mansion.
The man was – by all measurable criteria – considerably more empathetic and in tune with his patients, than thousands upon thousands of his physician-peers who criticized him.

Wheels55

This Dr. Gosnell makes Dr. Kevorkian seem like Dr. Seuss.

Prelutsky1540

Wheels: Right. Dr. K only helped those who wanted to die get their wish.

Nobody asked these babies what they wanted.

Burt

PatricParamedic

John in MA –
I submit that at least part of the reason the mainstream media treads lightly on the Gosnell “house of horrors” saga is that the story involves a bad doctor.

Bad doctors don’t get anywhere near the press attention they should.

I happen to investigate physician misbehavior for a living, and I can assure the readers that NO profession generates more crime; steals more money; kills & injures more citizens, and then evades more discipline, than the errant doctor population.

Almost exactly 10 physicians are found responsible for felony-level behavior EACH DAY. I’ll do the math for you: that’s 2,500 doctor-convictions per year – more than 11,000 over the past seven years alone.

The National Practitioner Data Bank holds files on a jaw-dropping 250,000 doctors – a stunning number of whom are filed under the category “Dangerous.”

Kermit Gosnell is indeed a monster in a lab coat. But understand this: He is not alone – not even close.

You’ve heard – I’m sure – of Nidel Hasan, the military officer who shot & killed a bunch of soldiers on a base in Texas, right?

When is the last time you heard a news reporter remind anybody that he is a doctor?

Yet, how much of any of this did we hear about during the incessant yammering called the ‘health care reform debate?’

Zero.
(see the Medical Miscreants website if interested in a reality check)

Prelutsky1540

Patric: Excellent commentary. It’s always been something of a joke line that doctors get to bury their mistakes. If you happen to be one of those mistakes, it’s not such a big joke.

Burt

Kansan

The MSM covered Hasan’s service and training history in detail fairly rapidly after his murders. It asked the question, why was he working at all, despite his problems?

The panties-in-a-bunch right wing, ever vigilant for any hint of communists-under-the-beds-conspiracy, no matter how far fetched, ignored those details, as usual, as it didn’t fit their collective meme.

What they repeated, over and over, was the fact that he was a Muslim and had been reading al-Awlaki’s craziness. It also concocted the fiction that Hasan and others on a ridiculous list, i.e. Cho, the Virginia Tech killer of his fellow students, were registered as Democrats.

The MSM also covered Gosnell, where I’ve been reading about him for a couple of years. There’s no question that the guy was an incompetent butcher. But the conspiracy nonsense again studiously ignores the facts.

PBS has covered Hasan in depth, but has avoided the tabloid sensationalism and trial of Jodi Arias or Casey Anthony or the sad fate of Terri Schiavo, which is why I prefer to watch public television.

Those facts include the theocratic legislation that has made it ever more difficult for women around the country to get contraception and pregnancy termination services. In Kansas they’ve included ridiculous laws that dictate the size of clinic closets and parking lots, all aimed solely at OB/GYNs whose services include terminations. None of them affect orthopedic surgeons, cardiologists, dermatologists or podiatrists. The lunatic fringe right wingers have even tried to keep OB/GYNs from learning how to do terminations in state medical schools.

Homicidal groups like Operation Rescue West and their grossly unethical allies like former KS A.G. Phill Kline, who, with the help of Fox “News,” chronically wage religious jihads on those courageous doctors providing impeccably professional services, until they are driven from practice or worse, are assassinated by members of those groups.

So quacks, thieves and charlatans pop up to fill a void created deliberately by those anti-regulation nutcases, many of whom implausibly claim to be “libertarians,” who aren’t at all bashful about passing legislation designed to deny to women legal medical services of which their storefront or megachurch pastors don’t approve. They even have tried to ban stem cell research.

Hence we inevitably get Gosnells, who do a low-priced cash business for uninsured minority group patients that is barely more competent than the back alley hack jobs of sixty years ago.

http://www.facebook.com/todd.zaino Todd Zaino

Burt, I will never understand how liberals can support abortion. If “Dr” Gosnell had been doing this to dogs or cats….well then you’d hear a vociferous outcry from liberals and it would be plastered all over the media. Gosnell will one day have to answer for his sins.
Gotta to love how the left wants to save trees, whales, spotted owls, death row inmates…but has nothing in their small black hearts for babies.

Prelutsky1540

Todd: One can only hope that “one day” will be sooner rather than later, and that he will spend the remainder of his life locked up with his fellow vermin. As for eternity, I will leave him to God to deal with.

Burt

JohnInMA

I agree that the media’s treatment of the Gosnell trial, much less their lack of “investigative reporting” of the full details of his handiwork, is the most significant travesty of ‘journalism’ I’ve seen to date. We know every, single, gory detail about the bloody horror of the murder involving Jodi Arias. We know a lot about the details of the Trayvon Martin incidence, even without having arrived at a trial with evidence presented. Details of those two are repeated ad infinitum.

I haven’t figured out for myself what is behind the inaction and unwillingness to return to some level of positive action to address the mentally ill. Is it related to the progressive dream of restorative justice for criminals, even felons? In that case, progressives equate rights equally – meaning criminals have the right to be ‘redeemed’ and returned to society just as you or I have the right to live our lawful lives freely (well, except for smoking, salt, large sodas, etc….). But I haven’t found any open discussion that proves progressives’ motives for the mentally ill. Yet. Surely it will be tied to a “fill-in-the-blank justice” issue when that does happen (like social justice, etc.) It will not be “fair” to isolate people which they will argue leads to discrimination. That any effort to deal with it is absent from all the Democrats’ proposed gun legislation suggests they are afraid to touch it just yet. It’s odd to me.

Prelutsky1540

John: When you say “the most significant travesty of journalism,” I’m sure you momentarily overlooked the way the media has managed to ignore the massacre in Benghazi and the ensuing coverup by Obama, Susan Rice and Hillary (“What difference, at this late date, does it make who did it?!”) Clinton.

Burt

JohnInMA

It was a hard choice, but for me the inhumane slaughter of many innocents outside the womb over years, not to mention a few adults here and there, ranks a little higher. At least with Benghazi, adults who were aware of the risks were the casualties. Being abandoned by your government is a heinous thing indeed. It’s a close one, but to not treat the Gosnell murders with the same vigor and word count as the Jodi Arias murder is a travesty of the first order.